Quibbles and bits: Libertarians At War, Pt. 1

The fun thing about quibbling with people is that even if they’re friends or acquaintances or just plain admirable people you don’t have to do any of that silly disclaimer business – it is utterly irrelevant to my quibbling with Wendy McElroy’s recent Mises Institute article on libertarians and war that she’s one of my favorite writers, she’s on my blogroll, we swap an occasional email, and I actually have been known now and then to donate money to buy her another box or two of internet. Quibbling means you don’t need to mention any of that, so just forget I said anything that looked disclaimerish.

Quibble number one: Some dead Greek guy, pre-bailout, once famously and correctly said, “If you wish to argue with me, first define your terms.” It doesn’t sound any better in the original Bronze Age Greek, I’m sure. The sentiment is absolutely correct, though, and without good definitions, how can you possibly hope to have good arguments? So let’s take a look at Wendy’s definition of war: [W]ar must involve the declaration of hostilities by one state against another, in which it commits the people and resources under its jurisdiction to hostilities against the opponent’s people and resources. Let me open the quibbling with one of my all time favorite internet images:

Let’s start with that “declaration of hostilities” bit. Does anyone doubt that we’re currently at war with Libya? I mean, we have planes dropping bombs and ships shooting missiles and Libyans are dying under the thunder of American-made (with money borrowed from China) high explosives on a fairly regular and ongoing basis. Yet to the best of my knowledge there has been no declaration of war by Congress, something that is arguably a Constitutional requirement, though it has been quite passé to insist on that since 1950 or so. I suppose you could argue that actions – and high explosives – speak louder than words and that the simple act of bombing the living snot out of another country is as good a declaration of hostilities as you could hope to ask for. Utterly unconstitutional, of course, but parchment is not a very good armor against bombs.

Ah, but the next part, that’s the fun one. “[O]ne state against another?” Oh, if only that were true. If only there were some way to ensure that it was only the state apparatus that could go off into a sandy desert patch somewhere and fight it out amongst themselves, leaving the rest of us non-state types to get on with our lives unimpeded. Sadly, though, that is not the case. Until one walks up to me and smacks me in the face with a haddock, I will continue to maintain that a “state” is a fiction, much like a corporation, a Rotary club, or any other name given to a group of people doing something in concert. Or doing something and dragging others along, often kicking and screaming. Substituting in “a group of people” for the word “state,” therefore, we can pull up a much more useful definition of war, that being: A state of armed conflict between different groups. Which raises the interesting question – if Libya is not shooting back at NATO, then do you have a case of NATO at war with Libya, but Libya not at war with NATO? What is the sound of one hand warmongering? But I digress.

That the definition of war involve the use of “group” rather than “nation” is further bolstered by current thinking in regard to the phenomenon known as 4th Generation Warfare, or “4G” for short. The US is clearly at (undeclared by Congress) war with the Taliban – and yet the Taliban are decidedly not any form of “state.” Russia is at war – last I looked, anyway – with the Chechens, Chechnya not being a nation. The British were at war with their own colonists back in ’76, though that would start a whole new discussion of what exactly is a “nation.” In short, a definition of war that involves “groups” rather than a requirement for “states” makes much more sense. Although Wendy contends that, “Nevertheless, at least in theory, it is possible to imagine a war without nation-states,” it seems pretty clear that groups go to war all the time, and no nation-state is needed for the process.

The next quibble is based off of this excellent question: “But what would a libertarian war look like? Despite self-defense provisions, libertarianism is based on individualism and nonaggression, which makes a collective blast of libertarian force difficult to envision.” Envisioning libertarians at war is easy. Envisioning libertarians waging effective war, on the other hand, is more difficult – presuming that one wants to look at the current mainstream view of war, as conducted by Americans, which is “pound the other guy so hard that he gives up.” Which is exactly what 2G warfare is all about. Given that not too many libertarians own B2 bombers or massed batteries of field artillery, though, libertarians are not going to be very good at waging 2G war. But just who the heck says they have to? There is no “rule” in war that says you are under any obligation to fight the way the other side expects you to. There is nothing reprehensible, for instance, about shooting with rifles from behind rocks and trees while the other side has to use muskets, wear red coats, and stand in a straight line. Translated to modern terms, there would be no requirement that a libertarian military unit – presuming you can herd those cats into some kind of coherent force, but that’s a different issue – bomb cities, destroy infrastructure, wipe out civilians, or in any other way act like a modern American army for whom all the world is simply collateral damage waiting to happen.

Wendy provides a mostly quibble-free analysis and summary of her position, stating: “To conclude: A libertarian just war would have to be declared in response to an act of aggression that could not be remedied by a lesser level of defensive violence. It would have to be declared by an agency on behalf of people who had assigned their rights of self defense. The war could be declared only on behalf of those assignees. Dissenters would have to be left in peace to defend themselves, or not. The declaration of war would be against the individuals responsible for an attack but not against the “enemy” civilian population. And, finally, the war would have to be conducted with strategies and weaponry that could not foreseeably involve injuring or killing innocents.” I would still quibble that there is no requirement that the war be “declared” or that the group needs to involve other agents besides themselves. Otherwise, and particularly the parts about not injuring non-combatants, it is a correct summary.

But then she drops this conclusion: “Given these requirements, a libertarian just war remains unimaginable.” Let me refer back to my little friend again:

In Pt. 2, we will take a look at just what a libertarian group at war would look like. Not only is it easily imaginable, but it’s entirely possible.

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5 responses to “Quibbles and bits: Libertarians At War, Pt. 1”

I’m no “libertarian” at all, so maybe my opinion doesn’t count… but I can easily imagine waging war – any of several sorts – against those who aggress against me and my community. And we would be bound only by the non-aggression principle for our methods and organization.

I emailed the link to Wendy – I’m hoping she’ll drop by and comment a bit.

Overall, though, you can be a full-on X-Wing Statist and your opinion here is still worth looking at and thinking about. I’m all about that free speech thing, and just can’t imagine NOT kicking an idea around – how else can you see how good it is?

Hello, Hobbit, Nathan here. Susan clued me in on your post as I was actually reading Wendy’s article. You, sir, are frustrating us by leaving us only half your thoughts right now! But I have quite a bit to quibble about in Wendy’s thoughts, and my ideas seem to parallel yours. First, her definition of “war” plays into the hands of the First Citizen and the “Conscript Parents” (denizens of that building with the dome on it) – not just in regards to Libya, but to the entire Long War and most others since 1945.

War is war is war – whether it is a “police action” or an “engagement” or a “rescue operation;” there is a reason we call it a “war on some drugs,” after all. I tend a use a Westerner’s definition of war, which is hostilities between at least ONE person on one side and some group of people on the other side, whether they claim any “authority” for their warring or not. That alone supports the concept of a “libertarian” (or “anarchist”) war. And history is filled with such examples, from a few members of a community (or a family) defending themselves against a raid (whether by Bedouins or English “knights” or Seneca or Comanches or whatever through history) to much larger scale operations, even though most larger wars are tainted by statism and the warped idea that certain groups of people can commit acts that are immoral for individuals or “non-state-approved” groups. The ones that immediately come to mind here in American history are Shay’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, the
Texian War of Independence, and many (not all, by any means) of the Indian Wars – specifically the Black Hills War of 1876-77 and the Modoc War come to mind. Europe has MANY more examples, including many of the wars in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland.

One issue to raise with Wendy, and to some degree with you, is that war and aggression do NOT limit themselves to boots on the ground, and boots on the ground do not always equate to aggression. Especially with modern technology, but even long in the past, aggression can be either passive (I will block your access to common assets such as water, roads, waterways by barricades or blockades) or active (I will be dropping rocks, artillery or mortar shells or rockets on you and your property until you do what I demand). It can also be indirect: remember Douglas Adams’ thoughts on aggression and war. And it can be the threat of aggression: at what point do we have a right to defend ourselves against someone who keeps threatening us and arming himself and time after time attacks someone else or some one else’s property or even our own property? Killing a cat or a dog is not normally an action which justifies the use of deadly force to prevent, much less in revenge, but is it a casus
belli for a defensive war?

I’ll try and wait for your part II before I comment more, especially concerning the various elements of so-called christian justification of war: some make sense but many do not. But I do believe that there can be war waged in support of, and following the principles of, the non-aggression principle. And that we can expect to have to do so, in the near future and for as long as there is a human race.

Hello LawHobbit. You’re a bit of favorite with me too. And I would be surprised if you didn’t have quibbles — or flat-out disagreements — with an article that covered a panoramic subject in such a cursory manner (as required by the venue, BTW). My purpose in writing the article was to stir up discussion, debate, critiques, backlash….in short, to get people talking more about issues like “the innocent bystander” problem.

You take exception to my definition of war. It is a fairly traditional definition: “war must involve the declaration of hostilities by one state against another, in which it commits the people and resources under its jurisdiction to hostilities against the opponent’s people and resources.” The current Obama wars fit this definition with the cavaet that the declaration was not officially rendered but de facto rendered by acts of war committed by Americans on foreign soil. I still consider Libya et. al. to be wars but they are ones that fail the “just declaration” requirement and, so, are unjust on that basis alone. The current wars fail this requirement both on statist grounds (the need for Congress to approve) and on libertarian ones as well.

As to being at “war with the Taliban”…I consider that to be a loose use of the word “war.” As with the “war on drugs” or “the war on illegal immigration,” the term has been misused as a political football to invoke fear and rouse passions.

I, then, stipulate that a libertarian war would be one *without* nation states committing their own populations and warring against dissenting factions within their own populations. It would be conducted by an agency to whom X number of people had assigned their right of self-defense. The closest I come to imagining a libertarian war is the excellent short story “The Ungoverned” by Vernor Vinge (highly recommended) but, frankly, in the current situation and given the criteria I established, I cannot envision a libertarian war. I freely admit that this may be a failing on my part and I would be happy to be proven wrong. (Link to online “The Ungoverned” http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416520724/1416520724___4.htm)

Well…I don’t think I’ve covered all your points but I will toddle on at this point anyway and check back later tonight. Until then, I will sit at my computer, working on other matters, and wriggling my toes in anticipatory delight at your response.

Disclaimer

My blog posts and comments are nothing more than the ramblings of just another guy, ya know? They are only personal opinions, observations, and discussion - I specifically do NOT give legal advice to the public, in general, in public and NOTHING said herein should be construed as legal advice to you. Consult your own darned attorney before doing anything that could result in criminal or civil liability to you. Or consult him in general just before breakfast - he'll have less work then and will be thankful for the extra billables.

*if I am, then you already know how to get ahold of me, and it's not in a public forum.